Pretty Nightmare (Creeping Beautiful Book 2), page 16
“How much deeper can it be?” Maggie yawns. “I’m tired.”
“I figure this is deep enough, to be honest.” I pause my digging and lean on my shovel. Wipe the sweat from my brow. “But there’s nothing here.”
Maggie doesn’t respond. Just rolls over on her back and sighs, making sure that the lantern is still shining down on my work area. “Why do we need this body again?”
“I don’t need the body, Maggie. That’s gross. I just need what’s inside the coffin.”
“Isn’t that the same thing?”
I shrug even though she can’t see me. “One comes with the other, I suppose. But no. It’s not the same.”
She rolls back over again. The light disappears, then it’s back, and she’s hanging her head down into the gravesite. “He was your twin brother?”
I nod.
“But he died at birth?”
“Near enough. I was told he lived a day or two.”
“And your mama died too?”
“Correct.”
“Well, Adam.” She sighs again and pouts her lips at me. “That’s all very sad.”
I shoot her a dirty look for calling me Adam, but don’t say nothin’. She knows I hate it. And telling her again, for the hundredth and first time, isn’t gonna change her mind about using that name in situations that call for it.
And this, she must feel, is a situation that calls for it.
I did drag her out of bed at midnight, drive her two and a half hours down to New Orleans, and make her carry a pickax and a lantern over here to Holt Cemetery. And for the past hour and a half she’s been tasked with holding the light steady as I dig up my twin brother’s grave.
She is my partner in crime.
Has been since the very beginning.
It’s all kinds of wrong. I really do understand that. But I’m really just trying to do what’s best for her. And sure, some people might argue that having your six-year-old help you dig up a grave in the middle of the night is borderline child abuse, but if we find what we’re looking for these secrets will keep her alive one day.
God. I’m getting really good at rationalizing.
“I’m sorry, peachface. Maybe we should just go home?”
“No. No. No.” She gets up on her knees and lowers the lantern down into the hole. It’s deep. Past my waist. “We’re already here.” She swings the lantern around, searching for signs of a coffin. Then she looks over her shoulder. “There’s a headstone right there that says Aiden Boucher. It has to be close. Right?”
“You would think.” But this gravesite has always bothered me. Why here? We have a family mausoleum not far from Old Home. But this is where poor Aiden got dumped. It never did make sense, but I stopped trying to figure my father out long before I helped him get killed.
“Do they bury babies six feet deep too?”
“It’s got nothing to do with how big someone is, Mags. And it’s not actually six feet. The depth of a grave varies by locality. But deeper is better because it keeps the animals away.”
She wrinkles her nose. “That’s gross, Adam. It’s inside a coffin, anyway. Animals don’t have thumbs. They can’t unlatch a coffin or open a lid. Seems stupid to go so deep.”
“Listen, a shallow grave comes with all kinds of consequences. So if, at some point in your life, you find yourself digging a grave and figure you can take a short cut and only go two feet”—I point at her—“you’d better think again, princess.”
She chuckles. “I’m not gonna be digging no graves.”
“We’re digging a grave right now.”
“You. Not me.” She wrestles with the front pocket on her bib overalls and then pulls out her phone. “It’s nearly five, Adam. Hurry. You know how much I hate lying to McKay.”
I sigh and take another stab at the dirt with my shovel. Throw the dirt over my shoulder so I can stab at it again. “What’s the difference if we get home at seven or nine? It’s the same fuckin’ lie.”
“I know. But this is gonna be a hard one.”
I pause my digging to point at her. “A test of your skill.”
“Dig. Or I’m gonna jump down there and do it myself and you can hold the stupid light.”
I tsk my tongue at her. “You just told me you weren’t gonna be digging no graves.”
“Why are you so impossible?”
“I learned from the best.”
She grins and the light from the lantern makes her look like a spook. “From me?”
She’s hopeful. She’s a good kid. A very, very good kid. So very, very smart. I had her intelligence tested last year and the woman took me aside afterward and told me she was gifted. A genius. IQ of a hundred and forty-nine.
No surprise there. She’s not as smart as Donovan—his IQ is somewhere in the high one-sixties, I believe. But she is Company. And related to him.
Maybe. Maybe not. I hate that McKay brought up Nathan yesterday. He is not Maggie’s father. I would rather it be Carter than Nathan.
But who her real father is isn’t even the point.
Company kids are not born. We are bred.
Even McKay has an IQ of one thirty-two. And he’s considered slightly above average for a Company kid. I’m just a bit higher in points. Mine was clocked at one forty back when my father had me tested. Respectable enough, for an Untouchable, but not standout special as far as my father was concerned.
That testing woman wanted to put Magnolia into a program for little geniuses. But that was in Germany and we were only visiting, so it was easy to say no.
But now we’re settling in. And even though I know that Maggie will get a proper education homeschooling with me, McKay, and Donovan, sometimes I get this urge to slip her into a more typical life.
It’s a dangerous urge. Because people will take notice of Maggie if she becomes part of regular society. They will, at the very least, become curious. Possibly obsessed.
Little Company girls like her just have this… draw to them.
“Sure,” I tell Maggie, finally answering her question. “I learned it from you.”
“Now you’re just lying to me. Who did you learn it from? Indie?”
“Did we or did we not just have this talk, hmm?”
She tsks her tongue. “Mama. Fine.”
She does not think of Indie as her mother. But I’m doing my best to fix that. I really am.
I don’t answer Maggie’s last question. Just stab the shovel at the dirt. And when it hits something that is not dirt, and makes that sound everyone who has ever watched a treasure-hunt movie recognizes, I look at her and smile.
That smile is partly about being thankful that she won’t be asking any more questions about Indie, but also because we finally found our prize.
“That’s it,” Maggie says. She jumps down into the hole with me, then reaches for the light and lowers it to where my shovel is still in the dirt.
It takes another ten minutes to remove enough dirt around the tiny marble coffin before we can see the edge of the heavy lid.
“Jump back up now,” I say, pointing at the ground above her head. “I need some room.”
“You just don’t want me to see it.”
“Neither here nor there. I can’t lift the lid off if you’re crowding me.”
She sighs heavily, always frustrated when we’re in the middle of some important job and she gets sent to the sidelines. But she doesn’t argue. Just places her foot in my palm when I offer a leg up, and climbs out of the hole. But she hangs her head over the side and lowers the lantern as far as she can.
Not for my benefit, but hers.
She wants to see.
The lid is heavy marble. The coffin is more like a sarcophagus in that nature. But it is small and after I get the tips of my fingers into the groove, it comes off easily.
I set it aside and reach for the lantern, taking it from Maggie and lowering it over the open coffin.
“That’s not a body.”
“No,” I say, crouching down and reaching for the stack of folders and yellow envelopes encased in plastic. “It’s not.”
“You knew, didn’t you?”
I nod, but don’t say anything. I didn’t know that my twin brother, Aiden, wouldn’t be in here. But I did know there was something more than him inside, if he was. This was the last place these things could possibly be.
“So that’s what you were looking for?”
“I dunno. But it’s something, anyway. Here.” I hand the plastic packet to Maggie. “Hold on to it. I’m coming back up.”
I slide the lid back on the coffin, then toss the shovel over the side and climb out of the hole. I sit down and dangle my legs into the grave. Maggie sits next to me with the lantern, eager to learn new secrets.
“Are we gonna look at them now?” She glances up at me with a stoic expression, all business.
I nod. “Yup. Right now.”
She rubs her hands together. “OK.” I can hear the satisfaction in her voice.
Did I turn her into an inquisitive kid who lives for secrets? Or is this just who she is?
I guess I’ll never know.
Because she loves a good secret. Getting one, keeping one—doesn’t even matter. She is my little vault.
But I have been training her. I started back when she was two. First, she needed to learn how to swim. That’s kind of important when you live on a yacht. Then I taught her to catch fish. Later, she learned to rock-climb. I had a climbing wall built in the yacht gym. It wasn’t high, but when you’re three years old, high is relative.
Then I took her hiking, and camping, and taught her McKay skills. How to track things. How to build a fire. How to find her way in seven different forests in five different countries.
She learned to cartwheel and then front and back flips. And when I had to go to Europe for six months just before she turned five, I put her into dance and ice skating classes.
She’s athletic and graceful. Strong, but still a little on the willowy side. Like her mother.
She hasn’t learned to shoot yet. But it’s coming up soon. McKay has an old .22 rifle left over from Indie’s childhood days that will be perfect to start on this fall.
No archery. But I did try that out with her last year. She’s just not physically able to draw the bow back yet.
And fine. My girl is never going to be an Olympic gymnast, or a professional ballerina, or world-class skater or swimmer. But knowing these things will keep her alive one day. They give her poise, and balance, and teach her determination. They will prepare her for the serious training that comes next.
Because I will train her.
Not because she’s my weapon, the way Indie was. But because there is no way to change who and what she is.
Either she learns to fight back or someone will kill her.
There is always someone out there hunting these girls. Including me. That’s why Wendy was so freaked out when she called me yesterday. There is a new one on the loose. One we didn’t know about. And if there’s one, there’s more. And this little girl, who we will now be hunting, has a man like me back at home base. A man like me who taught her things to keep her alive. To slip away when the Company men come for her.
“Open it up.”
“Be patient,” I say. “This packet is old. We need to be careful. Hold the light a little closer.”
She does that. And I peel the plastic cover open and remove the first yellow envelope.
I already suspect what’s in this one. I can just tell by the weight of it.
But Maggie audibly gasps when I pull out four straps of hundred-dollar bills. “Wow. How much is that?”
I flip through them and decide. “Ten thousand each.” I toss one of the strips into her lap. “You keep that one for now. Keep it close until we get home.” Then I toss her another. “And you can give this one to the guard out front when we leave.”
She makes a little huff of noise, but doesn’t get excited or go crazy. Just stuffs the straps into the bib pocket of her overalls.
They are old bills, not the colorful ones that circulate these days. Which means they will need to be laundered. But that’s to be expected. We deal in gold anyway.
Maggie has had her own stash of money since she turned five. There are always some low-value bills in that stash, just in case. But she’s got a debit card from a Cayman Island bank with her name on it, a bag of American Gold Eagle coins, and a memorized phone number she can call to access her trust, if those options are not enough and I’m not around.
I won’t always be around. It takes a lot of effort to live to old age in this business. Gerald Couture was probably the oldest Company man I’ve ever known. I’m trying to prepare her for that inevitability.
“What’s in the next one?” Maggie is ready to move on. Money isn’t exciting. Money is just money.
I pull out the next envelope and open it up. Inside is a small stack of passports held together with a rubber band, three birth certificates, a deed to a house I have never heard of, and an envelope with the name ‘Nick Tate’ scrawled across it in my father’s handwriting.
Fucking Nick Tate. Why the hell is he suddenly popping up everywhere all of a sudden?
“Huh.” Maggie is reaching for the envelope.
I snatch it away before she can grab it. “Not for you.”
“But it says Nick on it. I want to know what’s in there.”
“None of your business, little girl.”
She tsks her tongue in frustration. “Then show me something I can see.”
I hand her the birth certificates. “Here. Read them to me.”
She huffs, but this time it’s satisfaction. She opens it up. Squints at the small typed letters. “OK. Number one is… Mallory Match-it.” She looks up at me. “Hmm. Who’s that?”
“It’s pronounced Machette. Like machete. No clue.” Which is not entirely true. I mean, I don’t personally know Mallory Machette. But the Machettes are an old family in the Company. Scientists, mostly. “What’s that birth year say?”
“Whoa. It says eighteen seventy-five.”
“What’s the next one say?”
“This one is for… Neek-klos Zzzzabo. I don’t know how to say that.” She hands me the paper and shines the light on it.
“Sab-oh,” I say, sounding it out. “Nikos Szabó. The z is silent.”
“Let me guess. You don’t know him either.”
“I know the surname. But they’re all dead now.” The birth year on this one was in nineteen twenty-six.
“OK, then. This one is… oh, it’s an easy one.” Then she laughs. “Here, you do it.”
I take the stack and read the last one. “Ameci. Sidonia Ameci.”
“What kind of names are these?”
“Old World ones.”
“Whatever. They’re weird. Who are the passports for? Not Americans, obviously. They are not blue.”
I bop her on the head with one. “You’re a smart girl. But American passports weren’t always blue. Red was the color of the first booklet cover and they were green for a while too.” I open the first passport and find that it matches Mallory Machette. “Hmm.”
“What?”
“Mallory’s. But the year is off. I mean, obviously, even though this passport is green, it’s still modern. Issued in nineteen forty-nine. And if Mallory was born in eighteen-seventy-five then—” I shuffle through the papers that were stuffed in the plastic and come up with a death certificate for Mallory. “Yup. She died in nineteen eighteen.”
“Then they’re fake identities.”
“Jesus Christ, Maggie. You know way too much about this shit.”
“It’s your fault.” She’s right about that. “But I’m right. Aren’t I?”
I open the other two passports and find they match the other two birth certificates, and then find two death certificates for Mallory and Sidonia, but no Nikos. Which might be odd. “Hmm. Three random fake identities and a bundle of money that isn’t a whole lot, considering. I mean, what can you really do with forty thousand dollars? Not much.”
Maggie shrugs and swings the lantern. She’s not impressed with our booty. Paperwork is boring. And forty grand isn’t enough to impress her, either. Hell, we’re gonna give ten of it to the fucking cemetery guard to keep his trap shut when we leave.
I can’t say I disagree, but paperwork often leads to answers to questions you didn’t know you had. Except… “Why did my father hide them in this coffin?” I whisper. Mostly to myself.
“And where the hell is your brother?”
I don’t say anything about her swear word. I let it slip every now and then when we’re into something deep. And anyway, it’s a good question.
“Maybe he’s not dead?”
“He better be fuckin’ dead,” I say. “Because someone has to die. That’s how these stories go.”
It takes a good hour to fill the hole back in. And by the time we’re done, we’re filthy.
“No way is McKay not gonna say something when we pull into Old Home looking like a pair of midnight gravediggers.”
I turn left on Burgundy and then ease the truck up to a tall, wrought-iron gate. “Let me worry about that.”
“What’s this place?”
“You’ve been here before.”
“When?”
“Oh…” I think back a little. “You were probably four the last time we stopped by.”
“Hmm. I think I’d remember that. Four was only two years ago. And this place is… nice.” She leans forward in her seat and looks up at the tallness of the compact French Quarter mansion I grew up in. “Nothing like that cemetery. Why did your father bury your brother in that place, anyway? It’s”—she wrinkles her nose—“not right.”
She probably didn’t notice that Holt Cemetery was wrecked when we entered it because it was the middle of the night. But there was no way to miss the fact that the old resting place for local New Orleans indigents was in complete disarray when we left in the glow of a morning dawn.
“I guess we’d have to ask him to know for sure.” That’s the standard answer I made up back in my teens when I was still trying to piece together my life. The Boucher family mausoleum is located just west of Old Home, on a mostly untouched piece of wild land about halfway between the property and Pearl Springs.
